


how you wish it would be all the time

by easystreets



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Episode: The Gang Solves The North Korea Situation, Fluff, Gen, Illiteracy, M/M, Touchstarved People Read This
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:34:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25704466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easystreets/pseuds/easystreets
Summary: Dennis has had enough of Charlie's illiteracy. He takes matters into his own hands, because that's what a good friend does.
Relationships: Charlie Kelly/Dennis Reynolds
Comments: 16
Kudos: 64
Collections: Gen Prompt Bingo Round 18





	how you wish it would be all the time

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt "soft" for Gen Bingo Round 18. Title is unashamedly from Ribs by Lorde.

“We should work on your reading,” Dennis says, once they return back from the Korean restaurant, both still smelling like fryer oil and those soy sauce packets that they give you with your meal even though, in Dennis's opinion, there's already way too much sodium. “I’ll help you. Go get a pencil.”

It’s not because he feels pity, or any sort of positive emotion towards Charlie. He doesn’t; it’s not so simple. It’s because illiteracy is unbecoming. Only impoverished slobs can’t identify a handful of letters on a sign, or pick out a few sentences off of a menu. Dennis isn’t friends with idiots. Dennis doesn’t mind Charlie, so long as he isn’t being inappropriately patriotic or doing super secret sewer things with Frank. He likes Charlie-- in a totally platonic way, of course-- and therefore wants him to be capable of basic reading. This isn't a nicety, or at least, that's what Dennis tells himself.

Charlie tosses down a pencil and a sheath of Frank’s tax returns onto one of the booths. Dennis slides in and braces himself to become the patron saint of illiterates.

“Okay, what letter is that?” Dennis starts by pointing at the _I_ in IRS. He’s actually unsure of how children learn how to read these days. Probably on TV or some other bullshit skull rotting device. He and Dee had learned from Vogue and Women’s World magazines, and they’d turned out fine.

“It looks like… like a pogo stick!” Charlie smiles. “Aw man, I’ve always wanted a pogo stick.” He mimes bouncing a miniature Charlie with his hands on the table.

“It’s the letter I. Do you know any words that start with I?”

“Um.” Charlie frowns at the paper, like he’s seeing something Dennis never will. “Listen, bro, can we just move past this learning to read thing? It’s kind of boring as shit, and like, I wanna get back to our scheme.” He looks up at Dennis hopefully.

Dennis sighs. Sometimes looking at Charlie is like looking into a cracked and very dirty mirror. “No, man, we just got started! Think, you could finally write your waitress a letter.”

He stares at him blankly. “I write her letters all the time, dude. You don't have to like, understand words and shit to do that. And besides, she's kinda my soulmate, so she gets me.” Charlie coughs up a pissed off laugh, and Dennis thinks, _oh fuck_. Charlie being mad at him has a way of gnawing under his skin, mostly because he knows that Charlie isn’t at all required to give a single shit about Dennis. Mac’s his blood brother, Frank is his roommate, and Dee is the other person who’s being continually crapped on in their group. What does that make Dennis?

“Okay-- okay. Let’s start over. Let’s write your name.” Dennis grabs Charlie’s hand. It’s amazingly soft, maybe even softer that Dennis’s, which is slightly bothersome, considering the way he slathers his own hands in La Mer. He moves it into a curve for the letter C, and forces it into rigidity for an H. A,R,L, follow swiftly, and the I and E he guides Charlie in doing on his own.

“Wow,” says Charlie, staring down at the paper. “That’s kind of… nice.” He smiles, and it almost makes Dennis want to force his mouth into an unpleasant imitation of a rictus. Charlie’s smile is like an unbitten sliver of an orange; a freshly unwrapped piece of gum resting delicately on a person’s tongue. There’s something so perfect and raw about it.

“We can do the rest of the gang,” Dennis offers. There’s swathes of pencil crayons from one of Mac’s charts in the back; Dee always keeps the bar stocked with glitter glue. “Nice work, man.”

They do Mac’s first, on account of it being easy and familiar. The cobalt blue they use for it is a good choice. Dee’s follows, bright and shockingly yellow against the ivory of the tax return sheet. Then Frank, in nascent green letters, tall and lilting beneath the others.

Dennis’s is last and the most difficult. “There’s two baby N’s in the middle,” Dennis reminds Charlie. He slides in closer next to him and grabs his hand. “Two little mountains,” he says. The colour Charlie chose for Dennis’s name is a nearly invisible baby pink.

When he’s done, Charlie stares at the tax return sheet for what feels like forever but is in actuality probably ten seconds. Then, the paper falls softly to the sticky table, and Charlie’s arms are wrapped tight around Dennis. Charlie smells like the shitty microbrew from the Korean place and cigarettes and skunk weed, and Dennis doesn’t mind at all.

His presence is warm and comforting. Dennis doesn't want to let go or anything, but it's weird. Usually with a girl, or on occasion, with a guy, he would lean in and grab the girl's ass-- dial the intensity up until there was nothing left to do, no boundaries left to be permanently shattered. With Charlie, he's content staying almost immobile. Charlie's heartbeat is soft and slow. He slips away from Dennis for a fraction of a second, and then offers him his right hand.

Charlie is left-handed. That is one of the minute factoids that Dennis wants to press under his tongue like a KGB suicide pill and never forget. That is what makes Charlie _Charlie_ : the abrupt gentleness of his bruised knuckles, the raised ink of his stupid tattoo, the dirt under his fingernails. They hold hands, and stare bravely into their distorted reflections from the mirror behind the bar, and Dennis thinks, _maybe in another life we could have something like this_.

“Thanks,” Charlie whispers in his ear once he’s separated himself from Dennis. They’re still sitting remarkably close to each other, and if he were anyone else, if this wasn’t Paddy's and he wasn’t teaching Charlie how to read-- Dennis shakes his head. “We should do this every week.”

“You got it, pal,” Dennis says, and goes to frame the tax return with their names on it.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm pretty sure sure Charlie isn't actually left-handed. But maybe he is when he writes? Please comment if you liked this. Or if you really hated it. Or if you think Charlie is left-handed. Or if you believe in hand-holding or Dennis Reynolds' happiness. Or if you want to feed my already disturbingly large and fragile ego. Or if you think I should shut up now because c'mon seriously this isn't funny and nobody really reads the notes at the end this is mildly concerning actually


End file.
